Licfc05

 

sec. I d.C.

Plinio, Naturalis Historia, 8, 81-82

Evanthes, who holds a high place among the authors of Greece, reports the following tradition as derivaded from arcadian writings. A man belonging to a clan descendes from a certain Anthos is chosen by lot and led to a particular pool in that locality here he hangs his clothes on an oak-tree swims a cross, and goes off into a desert places, where he is trasformed into a wolf and for nine yaers associates with other wolves of the same sort. If during this time he has abstained from attacking men, he returns to teh same pool and, having swun across it, gets back his shape looking nine yaers olden than before. The story adds that he resumes the same clothings the lenghts to which Greek credulity will run are really amzing. Any falsehood, however outragedous, has its due attestation. Again Skopas, writer of a work on Olympic victors, relates that Demaitenos the Parrhasian at a human sacrifice, which the Arcadians were even in this day making to Zeus Lycaios, tasted the entrails of the boy that had been immolated and thereupon turned into a wolf; but that in the tenth year he was restored to athletics cameback, and now a victory in the boxing-match at olympia.